Z80 Info

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This is an extract from the comp.sys.sinclair Sinclair ZX Spectrum FAQ v.2.0 (July 3 1994), which is maintained by Marat Fayzullin (fms@freeflight.com).

This section is based on the text contributed by Gerton Lunter, author of "Z80" Spectrum emulator. I allowed myself to make some changes which don't change the content.

Features on Z80 CPU

Most Z80 opcodes are one byte long, not counting a possible byte or word operand. The four opcodes CB, DD, ED and FD are shift opcodes: they change the meaning of the opcode following them.

a) CB opcodes:

There are 248 different CB opcodes. The block CB 30 to CB 37 is missing from the official list. These instructions, usually denoted by the mnemonic SLL, Shift Left Logical, shift left the operand and make bit 0 always one. These instructions are quite commonly used. For example, Bounder and Enduro Racer use them.

b) DD and FD opcodes:

The DD and FD opcodes precede instructions using the IX and IY registers. If you look at the instructions carefully, you see how they work:

        2A nn           LD HL,(nn)
        DD 2A nn        LD IX,(nn)
        7E              LD A,(HL)
        DD 7E d         LD A,(IX+d)

A DD opcode simply changes the meaning of HL in the next instruction. If a memory byte is addressed indirectly via HL, as in the second example, a displacement byte is added. Otherwise the instruction simply acts on IX instead of HL (A notational awkwardness, that will only bother assembler and disassembler writers: JP (HL) is not indirect; it should have been denoted by JP HL). If a DD opcode precedes an instruction that doesn't use the HL register pair at all, the instruction is executed as usual. However, if the instruction uses the H or L register, it will now use the high or low halves of the IX register! Example:

        44              LD B,H
        FD 44           LD B,IYh

These types of inofficial instructions are used in very many programs. By the way, many DD or FD opcodes after each other will effectively be NOPs, doing nothing except repeatedly setting the flag "treat HL as IX" (or IY) and taking up 4 T states (But try to let MONS disassemble such a block.).

c) ED opcodes:

There are a number of inofficial ED instructions, but none of them are very useful. The ED opcodes in the range 00-3F and 80-FF (except for the block instructions of course) do nothing at all but taking up 8 T states and incrementing the R register by 2. Most of the unlisted opcodes in the range 40-7F do have an effect, however.
The complete list: (* = not official)

        ED40   IN B,(C)                 ED60   IN H,(C)
        ED41   OUT (C),B                ED61   OUT (C),H
        ED42   SBC HL,BC                ED62   SBC HL,HL
        ED43   LD (nn),BC               ED63   LD (nn),HL
        ED44   NEG                      ED64 * NEG
        ED45   RETN                     ED65 * RET
        ED46   IM 0                     ED66 * IM 0
        ED47   LD I,A                   ED67   RRD
        ED48   IN C,(C)                 ED68   IN L,(C)
        ED49   OUT (C),C                ED69   OUT (C),L
        ED4A   ADC HL,BC                ED6A   ADC HL,HL
        ED4B   LD BC,(nn)               ED6B   LD HL,(nn)
        ED4C * NEG                      ED6C * NEG
        ED4D   RETI                     ED6D * RET
        ED4E * IM 0/1                   ED6E * IM 0/1
        ED4F   LD R,A                   ED6F   RLD
        ED50   IN D,(C)                 ED70 * IN (C)
        ED51   OUT (C),D                ED71 * OUT (C),0
        ED52   SBC HL,DE                ED72   SBC HL,SP
        ED53   LD (nn),DE               ED73   LD (nn),SP
        ED54 * NEG                      ED74 * NEG
        ED55 * RET                      ED75 * RET
        ED56   IM 1                     ED76 * IM 
        ED57   LD A,I                   ED77 * NOP
        ED58   IN E,(C)                 ED78   IN A,(C)
        ED59   OUT (C),E                ED79   OUT (C),A
        ED5A   ADC HL,DE                ED7A   ADC HL,SP
        ED5B   LD DE,(nn)               ED7B   LD SP,(nn)
        ED5C * NEG                      ED7C * NEG
        ED5D * RET                      ED7D * RET
        ED5E   IM 2                     ED7E * IM 2
        ED5F   LD A,R                   ED7F * NOP

The ED70 instruction reads from port (C), just like the other instructions, but throws away the result. It does change the flags in the same way as the other IN instructions, however. The ED71 instruction OUTs a byte zero to port (C), interestingly. These instructions "should", by regularity of the instruction set, use (HL) as operand, but since from the processor's point of view accessing memory or accessing I/O devices is almost the same thing, and since the Z80 cannot access memory twice in one instruction (disregarding instruction fetch of course) it can't fetch or store the data byte (A hint in this direction is that, even though the NOP-synonyms LD B,B, LD C,C etcetera do exist, LD (HL),(HL) is absent and replaced by the HALT instruction.). The IM 0/1 instruction puts the processor in either IM 0 or 1, I couldn't figure out which on my own Spectrum.

d) About the R register:

This is not really an undocumented feature, although I have never seen any thorough description of it anywhere. The R register is a counter that is updated every instruction, where DD, FD, ED and CB are to be regarded as separate instructions. So shifted instruction will increase R by two. There's an interesting exception: doubly-shifted opcodes, the DDCB and FDCB ones, increase R by two too. LDI increases R by two, LDIR increases it by 2 times BC, as does LDDR etcetera. The sequence LD R,A/LD A,R increases A by two, except for the highest bit: this bit of the R register is never changed. This is because in the old days everyone used 16 Kbit chips. Inside the chip the bits where grouped in a 128x128 matrix, needing a 7 bit refresh cycle. Therefore ZiLOG decided to count only the lowest 7 bits. You can easily check that the R register is really crucial to memory refresh. Assemble this program:

        ORG 32768
        DI
        LD B,0
    L1: XOR A
        LD R,A
        DEC HL
        LD A,H
        OR L
        JR NZ,L1
        DJNZ L1
        EI
        RET

It will take about three minutes to run. Look at the upper 32K of memory, for instance the UDG graphics. It will have faded. Only the first few bytes of each 256 byte block will still contain zeros, because they were refreshed during the execution of the loop. The ULA took care of the refreshing of the lower 16K (This example won't work on the emulator, of course!).

e) Undocumented flags:

This undocumented "feature" of Z80 has its effect on programs like Sabre Wulf, Ghosts'n Goblins and Speedlock. Bits 3 and 5 of the F register are not used. They can contain information, as you can readily figure out by PUSHing AF onto the stack and then POPping some it into another pair of registers. Furthermore, sometimes their values change. I found the following empirical rule:

The values of bits 7, 5 and 3 follow the values of the corresponding bits of the last 8 bit result of an instruction that changed the usual flags. For instance, after an ADD A,B those bits will be identical to the bits of the A register (Bit 7 of F is the sign flag, and fits the rule exactly). An exception is the CP x instruction (x=register, (HL) or direct argument). In this case the bits are copied from the argument. If the instruction is one that operates on a 16 bit word, the 8 bits of the rule are the highest 8 bits of the 16 bit result - that was to be expected since the S flag is extracted from bit 15. Ghosts'n Goblins use the undocumented flag due to a programming error. The rhino in Sabre Wulf walks backward or keeps running in little circles in a corner, if the (in this case undocumented) behaviour of the sign flag in the BIT instruction isn't right. I quote:

        AD86    DD CB 06 7E        BIT 7,(IX+6)
        AD8A    F2 8F AD           JP P,#AD8F

An amazing piece of code! Speedlock does so many weird things that all must be exactly right for it to run. Finally, the '128 ROM uses the AF register to hold the return address of a subroutine for a while.

f) Interrupt flip-flops IFF1 and IFF2:

There seems to be a little confusion about these. These flip flops are simultaneously set or reset by the EI and DI instructions. IFF1 determines whether interrupts are allowed, but its value cannot be read. The value of IFF2 is copied to the P/V flag by LD A,I and LD A,R. When an NMI occurs, IFF1 is reset, thereby disallowing further [maskable] interrupts, but IFF2 is left unchanged. This enables the NMI service routine to check whether the interrupted program had enabled or disabled maskable interrupts. So, Spectrum snapshot software can only read IFF2, but most emulators will emulate both, and then the one that matters most is IFF1.